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Is Calorie Counting Practical?

Wednesday afternoon, 2:30 P.M. The bag of almonds is beside you as you send a trade request to your friend for fantasy football. You take a handful, then another, and then another. You bypass ESPN on your browser and click on your calorie counter. After all, you’ve tracked your diet for the last 3 months. You even saw great progress in the first six weeks and now you’re hooked.

Problem is, your diet has stalled.

You haplessly continue on, guessing at your portion sizes and recalling what you ate the last few days. Clicking, scanning and entering information that has a pretty solid chance at being incorrect. You’ve been traveling for work and it’s impossible to measure out food when it’s being served to you at a steakhouse…unless you’re one of those dudes who carries a food scale into restaurants.

As well as things were working before, calorie counting has become a burden. It’s become impractical for your busy life and you are no longer losing fat like you’d hoped.

All dietary changes will create some level of stress, and some tough decisions. Without a struggle, there is no progress. Changing the way you eat goes much further than simply food in food out; there is a huge emotional component of eating, as well as hunger and appetite signals.

In the short term, anyone can monotonously, robotically enter calories and macronutrients into a computer system. But how many can do it long term?

Few, very few. Just ask around, you will find tons of people who “used to” count their calories. They quit, gave up, and found it impractical. Now, they continue to struggle with their dietary behaviors and never developed control without thinking of food in numbers.

Calorie Counting isn’t that accurate.

Because of incorrect labeling, laboratory errors, and differences in food quality and preparation, calorie counts recorded on food labels and websites – even those within the USDA’s nutrient databases – can be off by as much as 25%.

For example, this study observed bagels on patients food records. The textbook weight of a bagel is 65 g; however, the bagels brought in by patients weighed between 98g-128g. That’s nearly twice the size of the textbook weight and up to a 550+kcal difference (Heymsfield, Darby, Muhlheim, Gallagher, Wolper & Allison, 1995).

Bottom line

Even if you’re the world’s best calorie counter, your calculations are off. Even the best data is wildly inconsistent due to factors such as growing conditions, seed quality (if a seed), and how your food is prepared. Now, this isn’t to say calorie counting is completely pointless. In fact, calorie counting is a great way to build awareness into your food choices and a great starting point in a fat loss diet.

But long term macro tracking is useless for most people. It’s inaccurate. It’s a major stress point. And for most folks, it adds unnecessary complexity and potentially unhealthy relationships with food.

Now, there are three circumstances in which I recommend counting calories.

High-level body recomposition goals, like those prepping for a photo shoot or competition.

That’s it. So what is a better option?

The Palm Method

My friends at Precision Nutrition have developed an uber-advanced, spectacular way to count calories……

By using the palm of your hand.

“The palm of my hand?”

Yes! The palm of your hand gives you a consistent measuring tool that is unique to your body and is always with you. When preparing your meals how often does your food touch your hands? If you cook your own food probably quite a bit. Further, this method works well when eating out at restaurants.

Using the palm of your hand gives you a clear visual of how much food you should eat, rather than trying to estimate how much chicken equals out to 6 ounces.